Sturgill Simpson appeared on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah on April 21.

He performed his cover of Nirvana’s “In Bloom“, which also appears on his new album, A Sailor’s Guide To Earth.

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Speaking to Uncut about why he covered the song, Simpson explained:

“That was my wife’s idea. What happened was I realised, ‘OK, I’m talking about my life but I’m also talking to my son and my mistakes and lessons learned and what I want him to take from that. So I’ve also got to represent that awkward phase that every teenager goes through, where your identity hasn’t really formed yet and you’re trying to figure out where you fit in.’ And my wife said, ‘Well, what were you listening to when you were that age?’ And I was like, ‘Nirvana – who wasn’t?’

“I was that latchkey kid from the broken home so I really felt like those records were for me. There were a lot of days where those headphones and those records got me through some stuff that maybe would’ve been a little tougher without them. And I wanted to capture that. I know it’s not what he wrote it about – what the song’s actually about I can relate to too in terms of other things going on with my job. But I felt the lyrics captured that young, clueless, sexually charged point where you are like a loaded gun, just running around cluelessly. If I was gonna do it, I wanted to try to make it the most beautiful tribute to Kurt we possibly could.”